Go Set a Watchman sold more than 1.6 million copies in 2015, taking it to the top of the US bestsellers list.
Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

Harper Lee’s second novel Go Set a Watchman topped the US bestseller list in 2015, selling 1.6m copies more than half a century after her Pulitzer-winning first book was published.

The figures were based on US print unit sales reported to Nielsen since the novel was published in July. The book was snapped up by avid fans who for decades thought the reclusive author of the 1960s masterpiece To Kill a Mockingbird would never publish another word.

Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee - review

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Pre-orders turned it into an instant bestseller at many retailers the moment its release was announced by publishers HarperCollins last February.

The novel features many of the characters of Lee’s original novel, which was turned into an Oscar-winning film starring Gregory Peck.

Considered a 20th-century classic that defined racial injustice in the Depression-era South of the United States, To Kill a Mockingbird is standard reading in classrooms across the world.